


i heard it’s said the revolution won’t be televised

by millepertuis



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, Incest, Mentions of Canonical Character Deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:56:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millepertuis/pseuds/millepertuis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Miles and Charlie walk across America, save Danny, and don’t understand each other at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i heard it’s said the revolution won’t be televised

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alwaysenduphere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alwaysenduphere/gifts).



> Title from Talib Kweli's song _Beautiful Struggle_.

She could save him, if he let her.

 

 

“You’ll be okay,” Nora says, studying the wound. She doesn’t say it will leave a scar; it was kind of the point. “You’re a tough kid.”

“Am I?” It feels weird, hearing that from her who always seems so sure, so strong when Charlie perpetually needs to be saved.

“Yeah. It took guts, to go in there by yourself.”

“It doesn’t really matter, does it? I still needed you guys to save me.”

“You can’t carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, Charlie. It’s important you learn how to take care of yourself, but you have to accept help too.”

“I know,” she concedes, because what else is she supposed to say?

“You okay?” calls Miles from behind them, and Charlie’s heart skips a beat but she very carefully does not jump out of her skin.

“Fine.”

“Here, make yourself useful.” Nora throws him the shreds of clean clothes they use as bandages. “I think it’s the fish that’s gonna take Aaron home for dinner if we leave him unsupervised for too long.” Sure enough, they hear a big splash from where Aaron’s fishing, a little farther up the river.

Miles starts to envelop her hand in silence. He hasn’t talked much since they got out of the factory, but it’s not like he ever does. She considers trying to make small talk, but the only thing that comes to mind is the weather, and she’d rather not be looked at like she took too many blows on the head, so she settles on paying attention to the way he ties the bandages around her arm.

She tries not to think about Maggie. She tries not to think about Danny. She tries not to think about her father’s blood on her hands.

“So,” she says brightly, “it’s a nice day, isn’t it?”

“It was a stupid plan.”

No small talk, then.

“It worked.”

“I won’t always be there to save you, Charlie.”

 _I’m not yours to save_ , she wants to say. She should say it. Scream it, even. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t.

“You know what? Screw you,” she settles on. “At least I try to do something.”

She tries to take her hand back but he wraps his fingers around her wrist, over her scar, and it suddenly occurs to her that the M isn’t just Monroe, that the M is Miles Matheson and now he’s carved under her skin.

“And what is that?” he snaps. “To get yourself killed?”

She wants to make him understand that she needs to do something, anything, to save at least one person. She doesn’t think they’ll save Danny. She thinks they’ll die trying. But she can’t tell him that, because if she does, if he sees even a crack in her resolution, he’ll try to convince her to give up and she’s afraid she’ll let him.

“You said you wouldn’t leave,” she reminds him, because that’s what keeps her up at night, even more than her father’s empty eyes and the fear that she’s not strong enough.

“I know.”

“You _can’t_ leave. I need you here. And you need me too, you do. You might tell yourself you’re perfectly fine alone, you’re better off, even, but it’s not true. You need someone to have your back, Miles. You can’t just go around, all alone when the militia’s after you, drinking yourself to death before they even get to you!”

“And why the hell not, huh?” he finally barks, letting her go and walking away from her.

“Because I care about you!” she yells after him.

He turns back and suddenly he’s in her space again, scrutinizing her, evaluating her like always, and she can almost see herself through his eyes. She can see how young and naïve and silly she must seem, how helpless, how weak.

“Do you?” he asks. His hands are shaking a little. It feels like it’s about something more than just his words, than just hers. It feels like there’s a hidden meaning in there, in his feverish eyes and shaking hands, and she doesn’t know what it is. She doesn’t know what the answer is. Or maybe she does. Maybe that’s the problem.

“What do you want from me?” she asks. He looks away.

He always looks away.

 

 

“It was stupid of you to let her go,” he says. Aaron is asleep and Nora is slightly snoring. Charlie is staring intently at the fire, probably to signify she’s ignoring him, but he’s nothing if not stubborn, so he doesn’t let that stop the lecture he’s been keeping in for hours. “I mean, you go on and on about saving Danny, how it’s the only thing that matters, and then you keep doing things like saving this kid’s brother and telling Nora to leave, just like that. Doesn’t really make any sense now, does it?”

She still doesn’t answer, doesn’t look at him, doesn’t even blink, and she looks so far away, like nothing in this world could possibly reach her, that it’s easy to confess what he really wants to ask

“Why would you let her go, when you make me stay?”

And of course she reacts then, looks up and stares at him, an implicit, _come on, you should know better in her eyes_ , and of course she knows. She already said it, once: he needs her too.

His brother is dead and his country is gone and his honour is gone, and the thing is, she’s his last link to this world; her and killing Monroe, and most days he thinks he still can’t do it.

He wishes he could hate her, could leave her and drown himself in alcohol and blood until there wouldn’t be anything left to save, but she looks at him with Ben’s eyes and Rachel’s unfaltering determination and he’ll follow her to the end of the world.

 

 

“Open your eyes,” she hears from very far away. “Open your eyes.” She doesn’t really want to. She feels warm, here. Warm, and she isn’t hungry, isn’t scared, isn’t lonely. Dad is here. Everything is okay.

 _Danny_ , she thinks. _I have to save Danny_. But no, that’s not true. Danny’s coming. Danny and Maggie are coming. She’s home. Everything’s fine.

_I need you to–_

They’re all going to die anyway. They’re gonna die and they won’t save Danny, so what’s the point? Why shouldn’t she stay here? Maybe now they’ll give up, go home. Maybe now they won’t die, maybe she won’t have their blood on her hands. She can’t save Danny anyway. She’s not strong enough.

“Open your eyes,” she hears Miles say like an order, like a prayer, like he’ll die if she doesn’t, so she does.

 

 

So they save Danny. They don’t die and they save Danny and they get a little something they hadn’t planned for.

 

 

He can vaguely hear Aaron in the back, probably filling Rachel in. Charlie still hasn’t talked to her, or to anyone really since they’ve gotten out of Philly. She mostly sticks close to Danny.

Sometimes, he catches her staring at him, but he’s sure she doesn’t know yet. She would be long gone if she knew, and isn’t that ironic? All that time, all he had to do was tell her the truth and she would have finally left him alone. But he didn’t.

He didn’t tell her he was militia, didn’t tell her that he founded it, that he fucking _made_ Monroe, didn’t tell her he left her mother there to die. She found out all his little secrets anyway, one by one, and she accepted them all, but she won’t forgive this one. She got Danny back. She doesn’t need him anymore.

“I don’t want you here,” he said, and “Leave me alone”, but he never really meant it, didn’t mean it at all.

 

 

She talks to her mother first. She should understand better than anyone, and if Charlie can’t convince her, well, she probably can’t convince anyone.

“We have to go back.”

“Charlie –”

“We _have_ to.”

“We don’t. The device is destroyed. As soon as we cross the border, he won’t ever be able to hurt us again. We’re safe now.”

“You know he’ll find someone else to finish the job.”

“No one else can build this amplifier. There’s only me.”

“But they don’t have to build one anymore, do they? They just have to fix the one you sabotaged.”

“Charlie, it’s already a miracle we got out once. That won’t happen again. You came all this way to save your brother, and you did. He’s safe.”

“But for how long? No one will ever be safe as long as Monroe isn’t stopped. We can’t just leave and pretend everything’s fine. I want more than being a runaway all my life, always looking over my shoulder, always afraid to trust anyone. We have to make this right, Mom. We have to go back.”

She passes her hand over her eyes. “Okay,” she gives up. “Okay. We’ll have to start by getting the rest of the pendants back.”

“Do you know where they are?”

“Some of them, yes. Charlie…”

“Yes?”

“You know we’ll have to split up. We’d draw too much attention.”

“Yeah. I know.”

She thinks about the last time she left her family alone. She just got Danny and her Mom back.

“You should take Aaron with you. If anyone can understand this stuff, it’s probably him. And Danny too. You’ll know what to do if his asthma acts up?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll go with Miles and Nora. She’s a rebel, you know, so she probably has contacts or something.”

“You trust him,” Rachel says. There’s something in her voice, something acid that sounds a little like surprise and a lot like Charlie’s missing a joke that her Mom doesn’t really find funny, but she doesn’t care enough to analyze it.

“With my life,” she replies, and then realizes how little it means: “With Danny’s.”

“Okay then. Okay.”

 

 

Miles has anger issues. He’s aware of that.

“Hell no!”

“You could at least hear me out!”

“Yeah, right. It went over so well the last time I did that.”

“We’re still alive, aren’t we?”

“Something you’d apparently like to correct.”

“Oh, come on. You know it’s the right thing to do.”

“The right thing for who? You know what, I don’t even care. You are not going back there.”

“Yes, I am. The question is whether or not you’re coming with me.”

But he can’t.

“I know you don’t want to”, she keeps going when he doesn’t say anything. “I know it’s hard. I know you don’t owe me anything. But I need you, Miles.”

He remembers what she said in the tunnels. “You saved me,” she said, when really, it’s always been the other way around.

So he says yes.

( _It was always you and me_ , repeats Monroe in his dreams, every single night, but he says yes anyway.)

 

 

“Don’t worry,” Nora says as Charlie watches her family walk away. “Nothing will happen. And if it does, your mom will take care of it. And if she can’t, we’ll swoop in to save the day, okay?”

“Okay.”

She tries to take Miles’ hand but he kind of jumps away and smashes into a tree.

 

 

It starts a little like this: Charlie did something stupid and almost got herself killed. It goes a little like this: he gets angry and yells at her, yells and yells until he mostly forgets what he was screaming about in the first place, and she doesn’t say anything, just stands there, looking at him, always fucking looking at him.

This happens quite a lot. A little too often, maybe, since this time Nora grabs him by the arm and drags him away.

“Don’t talk to her like that,” she snaps once they’re out of earshot. “I’m tired of your shit. She’s a good kid and whatever your problem is, you don’t take it out on her. She’s too nice to kick your ass but that doesn’t mean I won’t, okay?”

“Yeah,” he says. He _is_ sorry. He doesn’t mean to be like that. It’s just, it’s easier to be angry and have her hate him than–

He’s never been good with people, anyway. He only ever had one friend – Monroe. They did normal best friends things together; they drank beers while watching a baseball games, they invited each other over at Thanksgiving, and after the end of the world, they created a militia that to this day still terrorizes hundreds of people. So he has problems. Everyone’s got them.

“It’s not doing any good, and neither one of you deserves it, so just stop, okay.”

“Yeah,” he says again, and decides to shut up for the rest of the day.

Except Charlie jumps at his side as soon as Nora disappears into Harrisburg to find one of her delusional little friends and somehow they get into another argument. Okay, she tries to make conversation and he starts yelling for no reason, but he quickly runs out of steam since she doesn’t take the bait at all.

“You done?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you want from me?” she asks, when really it should be the other way around.

They already had this non-conversation, anyway. Can’t they just skip to the part where he hates himself and she feels awkward and they avoid each other for a few hours?

She grabs him by the collar and kisses him – she kisses him and he doesn’t freeze, doesn’t hesitate, just kisses her back and hopes to God she never lets go.

 

 

“So,” he grunts, “it’s time to go.”

She looks behind them. They’re about forty, mostly older or younger than she’d like, and all of them are batshit crazy – Miles’ words, not hers – but she has her family by her side and fairy tales taught her good always win.

She slips her hand into his. He tries to pretend he doesn’t notice the way her family’s glaring at him and fails spectacularly. Although he’s probably right to be worried. Her Mom and Nora can totally beat him up, and Danny would probably slit his throat in his sleep. And apparently, Aaron shoots people now.

“Everything will be okay as long as it all goes according to the plan,” she reassures him.

“Yeah,” he snorts, “cause that ever happens.”

But when she smiles to him, he smiles back.

 

 

 _She can save you_ , Maggie said.

She died before he could explain it was the problem.


End file.
